The Poor little child of a tar, together with Sweet Poll of Plymouth

Another sentimental song of a sailor’s son (see The Orphan Boy), “The Poor Little Child of a Tar” describes a beggar who by chance is recognized by his own father who has returned from the war. While the ending is happy, the song has a moralistic tone—the child and his mother were forced from their home “by cruelty” while the father was at sea. This text, “a much admired song,” was widely circulated in newspapers in fall and early winter of 1803-4 and again in several papers in 1808. The text appeared in American songsters and on English slip ballads and songsters chiefly during the first half of the nineteenth century, appearing in twenty-five songsters between 1804 and 1820 (Roud; “Early American Newspapers”; R. Keller).

John O’Keeffe’s “Sweet Poll of Plymouth” is described on the broadside, The Praise of Women.

Coverly may have selected the third lyric, “The Banished Sailor,” because it compliments the thoughts in the previous song on the broadside, John O’Keeffe’s “Sweet Poll of Plymouth” (The Praise of Women). However, this song is of an entirely different and rather contradictory makeup. The sailor’s narrative begins on a ship at sea and in the second verse he is suddenly on land in the army. By the third verse he is in chains, and in the last line, an unexpected narrator observes, “I’ll see you no more he did cry.” These inconsistencies suggest oral currency yet the diction and sentiments are of a more literate nature. Evidently the text was quite popular in England, as Steve Roud’s Folk Song Index reveals a number of English citations for this text under the title of “Banished (Banish’d) Sailor (Soldier).”

The somewhat common one-verse filler text “Garden of Love” uses a Raree-show technique to make its rhymes. This early eighteenth-century tradition adds “-a” to the end of words and is a parody of the halting speech of foreign street-show vendors making rhymes in a language that is new to them. “Nora” may refer to the principal female character in Shield’s Poor Soldier but this verse is not otherwise related. The text appeared in three songsters between 1792 and 1808, including National Songster (74; R. Keller); it also appears on the broadsideThe Dying Soldier.